The Asheville Citizen-Times says that it mentions that Brunson's daughter, who was raised in Turkey, had sent a video of the Turkish dish known as maqluba to his iPhone, which was found by the Turkish government. According to the prosecution, this dish is something that Gülen supporters commonly eat.

On September 28, 2017, Erdoğan said the United States should exchange Pennsylvania-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen with Pastor Andrew Brunson, saying "You have a pastor too. Give him to us.... Then we will try [Brunson] and give him to you."

It’s time for Turkey and Nato to go their separate ways

Michael RubinUpdated August 19, 2018

“IF the internal stress in the US goes on like this, the possibility of another 9/11 is not all that remote,” wrote columnist Abdurrahman Dilipak in Yeni Akit, a paper close to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his political party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP). Such threats and incitement may sound strange coming from a Nato member, but they have become the new normal in Turkey.

In 2004, Metal Storm, a fictionalised account of war between Turkey and the United States, shot to the top of Turkey’s bestseller list. The Turkish newspaper Radikal wrote that “the Foreign Ministry and General Staff are reading it keenly” and “all cabinet members also have it”.

After a US-based energy firm began drilling in Cyprus’s waters in Sept 2011, Turkish Minister Egemen Bagis warned, “This is what we have the navy for. We have trained our marines for this; we have equipped the navy for this. All options are on the table; anything can be done.”

More recently, Erdogan threatened US forces in Syria with an “Ottoman slap”. Both Dogu Perincek, an intellectual godfather of the Turkish military, and Adnan Tanriverdi, Erdogan’s military counsellor, are both fiercely anti-Nato.

Nor is Turkish hostility limited to words: Turkish nationalists have attacked American sailors when US ships are docked in Turkish ports. And AKP apparatchiks have demanded the arrest of US personnel based at Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base. Several American citizens, including the pastor Andrew Brunson, are already in prison on dubious national security charges.

It wasn’t always this way. Thousands of Turks fought alongside American forces during the Korean War. Turkey lobbied furiously for inclusion in the Western-defensive alliance. It was “imperative that democracies work in complete harmony, without competition among themselves or differences in policy objectives”, Foreign Minister Mehmet Fuat Koprulu told George McGhee, the US ambassador to Turkey, in January 1952, shortly before Turkey joined Nato.

And Turkey’s contributions to Nato have been valuable. If the United States was the alliance’s backbone, Turkey was its muscle: even today, it has more men under arms than France and Germany combined. And not only was it one of only two Nato countries to border the Soviet Union, but it also served as a bulwark against radicalism and terrorism emanating from the Middle East.

But all that was before Erdogan. Does Turkey, today, still belong in Nato?

Matt Bryza, a former National Security Council official and deputy assistant secretary of state, argues against any turn away from Turkey: “Abandoning Turkey now would weaken Nato, forfeit US influence in the Middle East and threaten the coalition whose fight against IS [the militant Islamic State group] is far from finished.”

Likewise, former US ambassador to Turkey James Jeffrey and his colleague Michael Singh insist that “cutting Turkey loose would constitute a self-inflicted wound. Turkey is not just President Erdogan but a regional geographic and economic giant that stands as a buffer between Europe and the Middle East, and between the Middle East and Russia”.

That all sounds good in theory. What Bryza, Jeffrey and Singh ignore, however, is just what 15 years of Erdogan has done to the United States’s former ally. In short, they confuse Turkey of yesteryear with Turkey today.

Consider Turkey’s military: whereas the Turkish army was once a secular bulwark against Islamism, Erdogan has changed its character. Almost all the officers, up to lieutenant colonel, have spent their entire careers under Erdogan’s leadership. Erdogan has also used a series of fanciful coup plots to derail the promotion of professional and more secular officers so that he could appoint political sympathisers in their place. He purged almost anyone with any significant service in Nato: even before the abortive 2016 coup, Erdogan had imprisoned one out of five generals.

The question of what Turkey might do if the United States cuts it loose is valid. But when Turkey’s proponents cite its importance in the war against the IS, they neglect to mention that the militant group only thrived because Turkey allowed foreign fighters and equipment to cross its borders.

Writing in The New York Times, Erdogan himself warned that continued “disrespect will require us to start looking for new friends and allies”, an unsubtle threat that he might pivot towards Russia. But, in many ways, he already has.

Erdogan has made it clear that he aims to purchase Russian S-400 missiles, which, if integrated into Turkish air-defence systems, might compromise Nato air-defence secrets to Russian engineers. Those counselling a softer line point out that Erdogan’s strategy is, in part, transactional. This is true, but that is all the more reason to second-guess Turkey’s role in collective defence. After all, when a crisis erupts, Nato members must rally together, not engage in bidding wars with Washington and Moscow over who deserves its loyalty.

Indeed, the real danger to Nato is not that Turkey will withdraw or pivot to Russia, but rather that it remains inside. Because Nato decisions are consensual, Turkey can play the proverbial Trojan Horse to filibuster any action when crisis looms.

It is true there is no clear mechanism to expel Nato members — but Nato’s survival nonetheless requires purging Turkey. The West should call Erdogan’s bluff.

Turkish Lawyers Demand Raid On Incirlik Air Base And Arrest Of U.S. Military Personnel
Aug 9, 2018.

A group of independent Turkish lawyers has petitioned the country’s courts to arrest nearly a dozen U.S. military personnel over alleged links to a coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2016 and a leaked document purports to show that they were directly involved in planning the plot. These latest accusations again call into question whether it still makes sense for the U.S. government to store dozens of nuclear weapons at Incirlik Air Base in the country or even use that facility as a springboard for conventional military operations.

The Turkish legal non-governmental organization Association for Social Justice and Aid, which includes prominent backers of Erdoğan’s government and enjoys support from the country’s authorities, filed the charges with the Adana Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office on Aug. 3, 2018. The 60-page criminal complaint also calls for Turkish officials to shut down U.S. military flights from Incirlik, a portion of which the U.S. Air Force has sole control over, and execute a search warrant at the facility to look for additional evidence. So far, the Turkish government does not appear to have acted on any of the charges.

The charges claimed the Americans were “attempting to destroy the constitutional order [of Turkey], attempting to prevent partially or totally the Turkish government from exercising its authority and endangering the sovereignty of the Turkish state,” according to a translation by the Stockholm Center for Freedom, a group Turkish journalists operating in self-imposed exile in Sweden. As such, authorities needed to “arrest the commanders of the U.S Air Force who are the superiors of the soldiers based at Incirlik and took a role in the failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016.”

The complaint specifically calls for the arrest of 11 individuals, but it's not clear if any of them are still assigned to Incirlik. The first two are U.S. Air Force Colonels John Walker and Michael Manion, who were, respectively, the commander and vice commander of the 39th Air Base Wing at Incirlik in 2016.

It does look like they might have originally intended to seek the arrest of American personnel at the base now, though. U.S. Air Force Colonel David Eaglen was commander of the 39th Air Base Wing until July 10, 2018. But other current and former members of the U.S. military that the Association for Social Justice and Aid wants the Turkish government to detain were never there.

These include the present U.S. Central Command chief U.S. Army General Joseph Votel and Director of Regional Affairs for the Deputy Under Secretary of the Air Force U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Rick Boutwell. Now retired U.S. Army General John Campbell, who was last in charge of the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan, is named in the group's complaint, too.

On Aug. 7, 2018, the Turkish newspaper Yeni Şafak, which also has strong ties to the president and routinely voices its support for his administration, then released images it says are of a memorandum detailing plans for martial law during the abortive coup with metadata that showed the author’s name was “John.” Turkish officials reportedly found the document while searching through Emails belonging to Hüseyin Ömür, who served as an aide to General Mehmet Partigöç, a military officer implicated in the plot to boot Erdoğan from office.

Turkish Warships Harass and Intimidate Cypriot Fishermen in International Waters

18 Aug 2018217

Turkish warships are accused of harassing Greek Cypriot fishermen in international waters, threatening to tow boats and take crews prisoner.
Warships commanded by the Islamist government in Ankara are reported to have approached a Cypriot fishing boat belonging to the ‘Ta Psarokaika’ company at 2 in the morning.

The boat was in international waters a full 16 nautical miles from the Turkish coast but was ordered to leave the area and push off out to 24 nautical miles, according to the Cyprus Mail.

Captain Aristos Aristeidou said he was shocked by the command as Cypriots have been fishing in the area for years, but left — under escort — after the warships returned at 4 a.m. and threatened to tow the fishing boat to Turkey and imprison the crew.

5:00 PM - Feb 24, 2018

Turkey Threatening to Sink Italian Oil Vessel Off Cyprus
The government of Cyprus has accused the Turkish military of threatening to use violent force against an oil and natural gas exploration vessel doing exploratory work off the Cypriot coast.

The Turks often attempt to bully Cyprus, a Greek-speaking EU member-state with a population of only around 800,000. They invaded the country in 1974 — opening fire on British soldiers and journalists who were present on the island while doing so — and established the so-called ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ on the territory they illegally occupied.

The puppet state is not recognised by any country other than Turkey, but Ankara acts aggressively to protect its supposed interests.

For example, Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently sent warships to prevent Italian oil prospecting ships licenced by the Greek Cypriot government from operating, with Ankara vowing it will not allow any wealth to be extracted from the Cypriot seabed unless it is shared with the occupied north.

11:05 AM - Feb 23, 2018

Turkey Threatens to Invade Greece and Seize Aegean Islands
Turkish politicians, including both President Erdogan and his major opponents, talk about invading Greece to seize Aegean islands.

Ankara also attempts to impose its will on Greece proper, with Turkish warplanes and naval vessels violating their European neighbour’s airspace and territorial waters hundreds or even thousands of times a year.

The Hellenic Air Force is often forced to scramble to intercept these incursions, which turned deadly when a Greek pilot crashed into the Aegean Sea and died during one of these missions in April.

Much of the Turkish state is established on land wrested from the Greek-speaking world by the Ottomans, in particular its European foothold in Istanbul (Constantinople) and East Thrace.

Turkish leaders have designs on Greek territory to this day, with the constant aggression in the Aegean being part of a strategy to forcefully assert claims on a number of Greek islands.

Erdogan je veliki gospodarstveni mag. Vidite, on je uzimao novac i kredite od stranaca. Ali vraćao bi novac nazad po hadiths i kuranu.

Evo javio se jedan amanetaš. Lijepo je vidjeti da vam srce leži u matici Turskoj. Ali ste glupe somine, kačite se prelako.

Faktor i Stav su tursko-bošnjački mediji

https://faktor.ba/vijest/napad-na-liru- ... -puca/1380

Govoreći od odluci centralne banke da poveća referentnu kamatnu stopu za 6,25 procentnih poena na 24 posto, istaknuo je da će Turska "vidjeti rezultat nezavisnosti centralne banke" i da, kada je riječ o kamatama, njegovo strpljenje ima granice.

Poručio je da privatni sektor ne smije da "digne ruke" od proizvodnje i investicija ali i pozvao građane da svoje devizne štedne uloge konvertuju u lire i da vjeruju u nacionalnu valutu.